The present invention relates generally to valves and more particularly to a valve for use in an automotive fuel line to prevent excessive fuel from passing to the carburetor and ultimately to the catalytic converter.
With the advent of the necessity to have catalytic converters on practically all internal combustion engine driven vehicles, certain problems have developed. One of the major problems relates to the transporting of such vehicles for delivery to dealers or other buyers of such vehicles. It has been determined that quite often in the shipping of such vehicles, such as on trains or trucks, after arrival at its destination that when the vehicle engine is started, a fire starts in the catalytic converter. This first can be intensive enough, even though initially confined to the catalytic converter, to burn out the carpeting in such vehicle and in some cases start the entire vehicle on fire.
The cause of this problem has been determined to be that during shipping, excessive amounts of fuel pass from the fuel tank to the carburetor and ultimately to the catalytic converter. Then once the vehicle is started this fuel is ignited in the catalytic converter, there is no practical way to extinguish it except by waiting for it to burn itself out, which is quite often too late to prevent the aforementioned types of damage to the vehicle.
Consequently, there is a need for something to prevent too much fuel from passing from the fuel tank to the carburetor during the shipping of vehicles. One simple approach would be to place a valve in the fuel line between the fuel tank and the carburetor. One way check valves which open in response to pressure from the fuel pump have been determined to be a viable approach to solving this problem, but at least one major U.S. automobile manufacturer has determined that the performance of available valves is such that it would be preferable to have the car dealers remove such valves before they are sold and delivered to the customer for use.
Consequently, there is a need for a check valve for this use with performance characteristics which obviate the need for removal from the fuel line.